Labour leader says coalition ‘packing’ and ‘gerrymandering’ Lords
Further to my blog yesterday, Labour’s Shadow leader of the Lords, Baroness (Jan) Royall has today said the government definitely plans to pack the Lords with a large new batch of predominantly Conservative and Liberal Democrat peers.
In a speech to the Centre for Opposition Studies (I’m amazed such a body exists) she said: “A new list is certainly on the way, and the Westminster rumour mill has it at a further 60 new peers – 40 more for the Conservatives, 15 for the Liberal Democrats and five for Labour.
“The final numbers may be lower than this, but based on these figures, the coalition’s already-dominant strength in the Lords would be substantially boosted – up from a total of 309 peers, with 56.4 per cent of the political vote, with Labour on 239 peers, or 43.6 per cent of the vote, to a total of 364 coalition peers, with 59.9 per cent of the political vote, as compared to 244 Labour peers, or 40.1 per cent of the political vote. Crucially, the coalition’s majority among the political vote would rise from 70 to a whopping 120.
“This looks like packing the House – because it is packing the House. Having loaded the dice, the coalition is now intent on creating a completely stacked deck. The purpose, though, is not solely to swamp the Opposition, so severely limiting the constitutional role of the House of Lords to scrutinise and revise legislation, though it certainly does do that.”
“It would also clearly have the effect of reducing the likelihood of the Government making concessions on legislation in the face of likely defeat in the Lords. The purpose is to negate almost totally the impact of the independent crossbench peers by having so many coalition peers available to vote that the crossbenches, on anything like their usual attendance and turnout, would be simply occluded in the division lobbies, in effect thrusting aside the very often acute, informed, intelligent and coherent arguments they had been making in the chamber on the Government’s legislation.
“Beating your opponents in the Lords by argument is one thing, and one thing the Government have often been unsuccessful in doing. But beating your opponents by unfairly boosting the strength of your own side is a very different thing indeed, and in effect amounts to political gerrymandering of the worst kind.
“What the Government is seeking to do here is to change the fundamental constitutional role of the House of Lords. Instead of it being a scrutinising and revising chamber, holding the government of the day to account – the very role described by the Government in its White Paper on further reform of the Lords – the coalition is seeking to return the House of Lords to the rubber-stamp role it used to have in the days of Conservative dominance.”
The 2010 Coalition Agreement committed the government parties to create new peers in the upper house in such as a way as to bring the balance of forces in the Lords in line with votes at the May 2010 General Election.
David Cameron has created 120 peers since taking office, sending people to the upper house at a faster rate than any Prime Minister in British history.
Yesterday a senior Downing Street spokesman told me that the idea that the government planned to create 60 to 65 new peers was “way off beam”. The Leader of the Lords, Lord Strathclyde, recently dismissed the suggestion as “absurd”.